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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 145 records · Page 8
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Deployment Readiness Framework for Marine Energy

As electricity prices continue to rise and extreme weather events related to climate change become more frequent, many island and remote coastal communities are prioritizing their energy future. Isolated locations and coastal environments pose challenges for energy costs and grid resilience, but the ocean can be a key solution. Marine energy could provide these communities with clean, affordable, and reliable power. The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are developing the Deployment Readiness Framework (DRF) to support remote, coastal, and island community-driven energy transitions. This framework can be used to better understand the readiness of communities for marine energy technology demonstration projects and their operation. The DRF builds on the Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Project (ETIPP) supported in part by DOE's Water Power Technologies Office.

community readiness↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Nasa's Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST): Combining New Observing Strategies And Analytics Frameworks To Build Earth System

NASA's Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) Program is one of several Technology programs managed by the Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) in the Earth Science Division (ESD). The AIST Program focuses on advanced information systems and novel computer science technologies that will be needed by NASA Earth Science in the next 5 to 10 years. The three main thrusts of the AIST Program deal with New Observing Strategies, Analytic Collaborative Frameworks and Earth System Digital Twins. This paper describes these three thrusts and how they work together to create future Earth Science information systems.

Jacqueline Le Moigne↗
DOE OSTI2022

Photovoltaic windows cut energy use and CO 2 emissions by 40% in highly glazed buildings

Buildings account for 30% of global energy use. The architectural trend across building sectors is toward more glass despite higher energy use and carbon emissions than opaque cladding alternatives. Numerous window technologies - low-emissivity coatings, triple glazing, dynamic tinting, and the more recently developed photovoltaic glass - have emerged in the last two decades as approaches to reduce building energy. However, a comprehensive understanding of where and how these window technologies can be installed to enable optimal energy savings under different climate conditions remains limited. Here we test window technologies using thousands of macroscale building-energy simulations for different climate zones and building designs to evaluate the associated net energy use and carbon-emissions reduction potential. Novel window technologies, especially photovoltaic windows with high thermal performance, offer energy savings in all climates, ranging from 10,000-40,000 GJ per year over substandard windows for a typical office building, resulting in up to 2,000 tons of annual CO 2 emissions reduction. Highly glazed, net-zero buildings are achievable via photovoltaic windows when combined with careful geometric considerations.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Non-destructive structural characterization of graphite components using mechanical resonance and deep learning

As compared to conventional nuclear reactors, microreactors have the potential to significantly reduce construction timelines and capital costs, decreasing the barriers for advanced nuclear reactor technologies. However, the lower power output of these microreactors (typically < 20 MWe) creates challenging economics if operation and maintenance costs cannot be sufficiently reduced. The compact size of these designs presents an opportunity for comprehensive in-situ structural health monitoring to provide real-time feedback in order to reduce operational costs associated with maintenance and downtime. Many microreactor concepts use graphite for both in-core neutron moderation and as a structural material, which has typically required some form of periodic and laborious inspection. This report provides a description and assessment of recent work with graphite to couple acoustic-based experimental measurements and characterization with machine learning models to mature structural health monitoring capabilities and generate benefits for the nuclear microreactor industry. With resilient embedded sensors in development in other programs funded by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy and elsewhere, the work described herein builds upon previously funded efforts to mature non-destructive testing technology that relates measured vibrational signatures to structural changes, using a combination of new experimental measurements and machine learning processing. Building on past successful demonstrations of predictive workflows to identify structural changes in a hexagonal stainless steel test article with excellent acoustic propagation, we first performed baseline characterization on graphite samples with canonical geometries to ensure compatibility and confidence in the applied techniques for a material with distinctly different mechanical properties. In contrast to efforts in previous years, we worked exclusively with unidirectional vibration data that is more comparable to those expected from the existing embedded sensor technologies which are suitable for deployment in a reactor setting. Established acoustic and modern machine-learning-based characterization approaches were applied to the resulting datasets from these simple geometries. Both approaches were found to be highly capable of detecting even small geometric irregularities amongst nominally identical samples. As such, we then moved to testing these approaches for detection of artificial local stress perturbations introduced into a more complex geometry: a hexagonal block with drilled holes. A main outcome of this work is that a generalizable ML workflow can be used to detect and predict the characteristics of small artificial anomalies in a graphite component with a relevant geometry. While this work was performed using surficial vibration data, we expect the approach to be flexible and viable for other monitoring scenarios, such as those with different arrangements or types of sensor arrays. As compared to previously funded efforts, an existing ML workflow based on neural networks was enhanced through the addition of recently developed Fourier neural operators. As applied to previously collected and new vibration datasets, prediction accuracies of anomaly characterizations were greatly improved with minimal added computational cost. As trained on small durations of vibration data (tens of seconds) collected over a realistic number of locations, the model was able to reliably determine the presence of a subtle stress anomaly and begin to provide location estimates. Such an approach is likely to be viable for more relevant reactor damage scenarios for graphite components, such as progressive crack growth or creep.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

High Energy Physics Network Requirements Review: Final Report, July 2024–December 2024

The world-class research infrastructure at the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science (SC) provides the research community with premier observational, experimental, computational, and network capabilities. Each user facility is designed to provide unique capabilities to advance the core DOE mission in science and technology for its SC program to stimulate rich scientific discoveries and enhance its innovation ecosystem. Research communities gather and flourish around each user facility, bringing together new and enhanced perspectives. The continual reinvention of the practice of science — as users and staff forge novel approaches expressed in research workflows — unlocks new discoveries and propels scientific progress. Within this research ecosystem, the high-performance computing (HPC) and networking user facilities stewarded by the SC’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program play a dynamic cross-cutting role, enabling complex workflows demanding high-performance data, networking, and computing solutions. The ASCR facilities enterprise seeks to understand and meet the needs and requirements across SC and DOE domain science programs and priority efforts, highlighted by the formal requirements review methodology. Between July and December 2024, the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and the Office of High Energy Physics (HEP) of the DOE-SC organized an ESnet requirements review of HEP-supported program activities. Preparation for these events included identification of key stakeholders: program and facility management, research groups, and technology providers. Each stakeholder group was asked to prepare formal case study documents about its relationship to the HEP program to build a complete understanding of the current, near-term, and long-term status, expectations, and processes that will support the science going forward.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA's Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST): Combining New Observing Strategies and Analytics Frameworks to Build Earth System Digital Twins

NASA's Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) Program is one of several Technology programs managed by the Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) in the Earth Science Division (ESD). The AIST Program focuses on advanced information systems and novel computer science technologies that will be needed by NASA Earth Science in the next 5 to 10 years. The three main thrusts of the AIST Program deal with New Observing Strategies, Analytic Collaborative Frameworks and Earth System Digital Twins. This paper describes these three thrusts and how they work together to create future Earth Science information systems.

Jacqueline Le Moigne↗
NASA NTRS2005

Development of a Modeling Framework to Support Control Investigations of Sailcraft Missions A First Cut: ABLE Sailcraft Dynamics Model

Solar Sailcraft, the stuff of dreams of the H.G. Wells generation, is now a rapidly maturing reality. The promise of unlimited propulsive power by harnessing stellar radiation is close to realization. Currently, efforts are underway to build, prototype and test two configurations. These sails are designed to meet a 20m sail requirement, under guidance of the In-Space Propulsion (ISP) technology program office at MSFC. While these sails will not fly , they are the first steps in improving our understanding of the processes and phenomena at work. As part of the New Millennium Program (NMP) the ST9 technology validation mission hopes to launch and fly a solar sail by 2010 or sooner. Though the Solar Sail community has been studying and validating various concepts over two decades, it was not until recent breakthroughs in structural and material technology, has made possible to build sails that could be launched. With real sails that can be tested (albeit under earth conditions), the real task of engineering a viable spacecraft has finally commenced. Since it is not possible to accurately or practically recreate the actual operating conditions of the sailcraft (zero-G, vacuum and extremely low temperatures), much of the work has focused on developing accurate models that can be used to predict behavior in space, and for sails that are 6-10 times the size of currently existing sails. Since these models can be validated only with real test data under "earth" conditions, the process of modeling and the identification of uncertainty due to model assumptions and scope need to be closely considered. Sailcraft models that exist currently, are primarily focused on detailed physical representations at the component level, these are intended to support prototyping efforts. System level models that cut across different sail configurations and control concepts while maintaining a consistent approach are non-existent. Much effort has been focused on the areas of thrust performance, solar radiation prediction, and sail membrane behavior vis-a-vis their reflective geometry, such as wrinkling/folding/furling as it pertains to thrust prediction. A parallel effort has been conducted on developing usable models for developing attitude control systems (ACS), for different sail configurations in different regimes. There has been very little by way of a system wide exploration of the impact of the various control schemes, thrust prediction models for different sail configurations being considered.

Sarathy, Sriprakash↗
DOE OSTI2023

Comparing Occupant Light Exposure in Factory and Office Spaces

There is an increasing desire to provide healthy workplace environments that better serve people while minimizing the impact on the planet. Building recommendations help designers to incorporate the latest research and best practices, but translating research studies conducted in different settings to broader recommendations is challenging. This is particularly true for lighting, with researchers continuing to learn more about circadian, neuroendocrine, and neurobehavioral responses to light. The recommendations are regularly adjusting to incorporate the latest research as well as feedback from practitioners implementing these recommendations. There remains a need to better document the actual light exposure that people experience over the course of a day and across seasons, so that researchers can better understand the influence of light on people and recommendations can be refined. Thankfully, advances in sensor technology are making this more possible than ever. PNNL collaborated with ETC Inc. to understand actual occupant light exposure in factory and office spaces at ETC’s Headquarters in Middleton, WI. The primary building at ETC headquarters opened in 2004 and houses approximately 800 employees that contribute to central business functions, customer support, research and development, as well as the company’s primary 60,000 ft2 manufacturing facility. Vertical light exposure measurements including electric light and daylight were recorded in factory, research and development, and office work areas at occupant eye height. This document will focus on lighting measurements collected in six factory and office locations across work location, season, and time of day. Ultimately, detailed lighting measurements can be coupled with employee surveys to support development of satisfactory work environments.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Deployment Readiness Framework Subtask 1.2 Outreach Report: Common Themes Among Clean Energy Transition Technical Assistance Projects

Island and remote coastal communities face an uncertain energy future. These communities build, operate, and maintain energy infrastructure in extremely challenging environments and pay the highest prices for electricity and fuels. Moreover, climate change increasingly affects grid reliability, resiliency, and, ultimately, the cost of energy. Marine energy could address many of the challenges faced by island and remote coastal communities, but these communities often have limited resources and capacity to invest in complex energy and coastal resilience issues. The Deployment Readiness Framework (DRF) is being developed to support community-driven energy transitions in these coastal communities and to better understand the readiness of communities for marine energy demonstration and operation. Led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the DRF builds on the Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Project (ETIPP) supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy's Water Power Technologies Office. This report details the results from the stakeholder outreach and engagement effort linked to the previously reported literature review.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2023

Blowdown Recovery System for Cooling Tower Water Treatment

From 2014-2017, the U.S. General Services Administration's (GSA's) average nationwide water rates increased 41%. Rapidly escalating costs, mandated water-reduction targets, and the fact that an average of 28% of commercial office building water use is associated with heating and cooling led the GSA Green Proving Ground program to select alternative water treatment technologies for in-field validation. This report summarizes the latest alternative water treatment evaluation completed in 2022 - a Blowdown Recovery System for Cooling Tower Water Treatment. This Green Proving Ground program project assessed the performance of an alternative water treatment system provided by Aqualogix for treating cooling tower blowdown at the Lloyd D. George U.S. Courthouse in Las Vegas, Nevada.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS2012

Summer Final Report

The summer of 2012 has been filled with many memorable events and activities. As an intern, I had responsibilities that had to be fulfilled. My tour of duty was completed as an administrative student trainee in the Information Technology and Communications Services Business Office (IT-A). In accordance with the Business Objectives and Agreement of the Business Office and my performance plan, I was to provide business office support, improve business, project management, and technical work processes. With this being stated, I supported a project called "The Big Move Project" (TBMP), which will take course over the next several years. The Big Move Project is the planning of the Information Technology (IT) Directorate's relocation to various buildings in the course of upcoming years, when designs and the building of Central Campus have been completed. Working directly with my supervisor and the project manager, I was responsible for gathering both administrative and operational area requirements for the Information Technology (IT) Directorate, along with its outsourced support and contractors, such as IMCS, NICS, and ACES. My first action was to create rubrics that will serve as a guideline for the information that should be given by each branch of IT. After receiving that information via a few KAITS actions, I was able to start the consolidation process, and begin working on a presentation. A SharePoint was created shortly after for others to view the progression of the project, which I managed. During the consolidation ofthis information, I would occasionally present to the IT Deputy Director and IT Chiefs. The draft of this presentation was shown to employees of Center Operations (T A) and stakeholders-IT Chief Officers and contractor managers-in the relocation of IT to make them aware of what requirements must be met that will enable IT to be accommodated appropriately in the design of Central Campus Phase 11-the time in which IT and its contractors are scheduled to be relocated. Besides supporting TBMP, I also supported the Section 508 Policy Compliance Coordinator, R. Liang. Section 508 is a policy that requires employers to implement accessibility assurance of information and technology to disabled communities. On Thursday, July 19, 2012, I was able to go to Camp Boggy Creek-a camp for disabled children-for an education outreach, in collaboration with the Education Office. We shared with them information about how astronauts live and work in space, they were able to ride hovercrafts, build paper rockets, and then launch them outside. Although this outreach was quite fun with the kids at the camp, this was a learning opportunity to gain some insight to those with cognitive and physical disabilities, the problems they typically face, and in tum, how to accommodate those with disabilities in the work environment. In the process of implementing accessibility and Section 508 compliance, I attended various teleconferences, did field runs to supply closed-caption call phones to employees with limited hearing, and helped with the development of the charter ofthe Section 508 Compliance Working Group.

Makidi, Nitou↗
NASA NTRS2001

Business is Beaming

Terabeam has developed a Fiberless Optical(TM) Network that transmits broadband data from office buildings to the nation's wide-area networks (WANs), without digging up the streets. A key component of Terabeam's Fiberless Network is Large Aperture Holographic Optic technology, developed by Ralcon Development Lab, of Paradise, Utah. Ralcon developed the Holographic Optical Element (HOE) technology with assistance from a NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract. Terabeam further developed the HOE technology and incorporated it into its Fiberless Optical Network-sending an immeasurable amount of information soaring overhead. Terabeam developed its Fiberless Optical Network using a proprietary HOE to transmit data. The unit is mounted near an office window and has the ability to beam safe, low-power, invisible data through the air at gigabits-per-second speeds to anywhere in the service area. Gigabits-per-second speeds are thousands of times faster than the speeds of current broadband transmissions. This allows businesses to connect to local-area networks (LANs) as well as WANs, in a quick and affordable manner.

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2020

Behind the Meter Storage for Electric Vehicle Charging, Electrochemical and Thermal Energy Storage, and Solar Photovoltaic

In response to the potentially large and irregular demand from EVs, along with changing load profiles from buildings with on-site generation, utilities are evaluating multiple options for managing dynamic loads, including time-of-use pricing, demand charges, battery storage, and curtailment of variable generation. Buildings, as well as commercial, public, and workplace EV charging operations, can use a combination of electrochemical battery storage and thermal energy storage coupled with on-site generation to manage energy costs as well as provide resiliency and reliability for EV charging and building energy loads. We are completing a behind the meter storage analysis that focuses on determining the optimal system designs and energy flows for thermal and electrochemical behind the meter storage with on-site solar photovoltaic (PV) generation enabling electric vehicle charging in various climates, building types, and utility rate structures. In completing this analysis, we have developed a tool that combines existing battery models via the System Advisor Model (SAM) and building modeling software via EnergyPlus into a single interface. This tool allows us to simulate a building with a detailed battery model to properly size the battery, thermal energy storage, and solar PV systems to maximize profit for the system owner. This also allows us to assess how the battery degrades under various supervisory control dispatch algorithms to control charging/discharging; we can also see how thermal energy storage is created and used to complement the battery to reduce thermal loads in the building. With this project, we can analyze new batteries that are designed specifically for energy storage, rather than designed to be extremely energy dense for electric vehicle applications, using battery lifetime models from other national labs and the existing SAM battery model, which has detailed lifetime and degradation parameters. We can also assess novel thermal storage technologies by integrating them into the whole building energy simulation program EnergyPlus. Because the model calls both SAM and EnergyPlus, required inputs need to be compatible for both models. These inputs include, on a high-level, the following: weather files, building and electric vehicle load profiles, electricity rate tariff information, and system cost information for the stationary battery, solar PV, and thermal storage system. The various buildings we are studying for this analysis are retail big-box grocery store, commercial office building, fleet vehicle depot and operations facility, multi-family residential, and electric vehicle charging station. For these different applications, the battery and thermal storage will be dispatched differently, and the various technologies are sized differently to optimize cost.

30 DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Advanced Information Systems Technology for NASA Earth System Digital Twins (ESDT)

ESA and NASA have both started programs to design and develop Digital Twins of the Earth and/or Earth systems. Organized around interconnected, multi-domain, high-scale modeling capabilities, the three major components of an Earth System Digital Twin are a continuously updated Digital Replica of the Earth System of interest, dynamic Forecasting models, and Impact Assessment capabilities. Earth System Digital Twins integrate diverse Earth and human activity models, continuous observations, and information system capabilities to provide unified, comprehensive representations and predictions that can be utilized for monitoring the health of the Planet, as well as for developing actionable information to support decision making. More generally, Digital Twins will help researchers better understand the fundamental Earth systems that impact everything from wildfires to climate change. This Townhall will first provide a short description of ESA’s, NASA’s and CNES’s current efforts in Digital Twins: • Destination Earth (DestinE) is the first initiative of the European Union to create a Digital Twin of the Earth, particularly focused on weather and climate, and as a coordinated effort between the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), ESA and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). • Additionally, ESA is developing several Digital Twin Earth Precursor Activities to study some of the key scientific and technical challenges associated with building a “Digital Twin Earth”. These include forests, hydrology, Antarctica, food systems, oceans, and climate hot spots Digital Twin prototypes. • NASA Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO)’s Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) Program has started an initiative in Earth System Digital Twins (ESDT), with 14 current projects in this area, developing various information systems technologies and prototypes that will help prepare the development of future NASA Digital Twins. • CNES is currently developing the concept of a Digital Twin Factory (DTF), which relies on a data lake, a high computing capability using clouds and/or HPC and has thematic algorithms and methodologies able to generate registered and coherent layers of information in order to enrich a datacube from which physical indicators can be computed spatially. NASA, ESA and CNES are also currently defining science use cases that will be presented during the townhall; those and a few short discussions of current projects will serve as a starting point to engage a dialogue about Digital Twins of the Earth with the IGARSS community.

earth science remote sensing; Information systems↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Addressing User Needs through the Stakeholder Engagement Program

Every two years, the Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG), an initiative of the U.S. Group on Earth Observations (USGEO), surveys federal agencies to pinpoint their satellite Earth observation needs. For each expressed need, NASA-led assessment teams coordinate with the agencies to devise solutions. Solutions can include existing or modified data products as well as the construction of new data products and technologies, such as the Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS) product and the Catalog of Archived Sub-Orbital Earth Science Investigations (CASEI). To facilitate adoption of new data products and technologies, the SNWG Management Office’s Stakeholder Engagement Program (SEP) was established. The program’s primary goals are to respond to training and capacity building needs expressed by agencies and to encourage engagement from stakeholders as SNWG solutions are developed. To serve these needs, SEP has developed the following: an SNWG Solutions Earthdata webpage, an SEP Earthdata webpage, and an Earthdata Search Portal for SNWG products. These avenues provide assistance to users from all backgrounds and levels of expertise as well as publicize the ongoing efforts of SNWG solutions. In addition, the SEP is also collaborating with NASA’s Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center to develop user-driven applications for SNWG products leveraging stakeholder input. This presentation will provide an overview of the SEP, highlight the resources currently available to users, and describe ongoing efforts to address the needs of users, so SNWG products can be better implemented into scientific workflows.

Jenny Wood↗
DOE OSTI2022

Prizes Sustain NREL Water Power Innovation

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) administers several prizes designed to encourage and support innovation that could help the water power industry grow and improve. Funded and hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO), these competitions run throughout the year and tap into a diverse community of contributors who leverage prize money to craft and build solutions for targeted challenges.

HYDRO ENERGY,TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2020

A Comprehensive Analysis of Energy and Daylighting Impact of Window Shading Systems and Control Strategies on Commercial Buildings in the United States

Commercial buildings consume approximately 1.9 EJ of energy in the United States, 50% of which is for heating, cooling, and lighting applications. It is estimated that windows contribute up to 34% of the energy used for heating and cooling. However, window retrofits are not often undertaken to increase energy efficiency because of the high cost and disruptive nature of window installation. Highly efficient window technologies would also need shading devices for glare prevention and visual comfort. An automated window shading system with an appropriate control strategy is a technology that can reduce energy demand, maintain occupant comfort, and enhance the aesthetics and privacy of the built environment. However, the benefits of the automated shades currently used by the shading industry are not well studied. The topic merits an analysis that will help building owners, designers and engineers, and utilities make informed decisions using knowledge of the impact of this technology on energy consumption, peak demand, daylighting, and occupant comfort. This study uses integrated daylight and whole-building energy simulation to evaluate the performance of various control strategies that the shading industry uses in commercial office buildings. The analysis was performed for three different vintages of medium office buildings at six different locations in United States. The results obtained show the control strategies enabled cooling energy savings of up to 40% using exterior shading, and lighting energy savings of up to 25%. The control strategies described can help building engineers and researchers explore different control methods used to control shading in actual buildings but rarely discussed in the literature. This information will give researchers the opportunity to investigate potential improvements in current technologies and their performance.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗